Open Window
by Charli-Slater
Summary: Inspired greatly by Secret Window.


'I guess it's time you went to bed, little man.' Sophie said. The child snuggled deeper into the blowsy old sofa and lay his head in her lap. Sophie knew the boy had suffered horribly in the past week but felt awkward in her new role of mother. She had reached fifty without bearing children of her own. Sophie pushed him gently upright, stood up and pulled him to his feet. 'Come on, Nathan. Let's go. Say night to Uncle George.' His uncle remained hidden behind his paper and the five-year-old said nothing. Holding Nathan's damp hand, Sophie took him up the narrow creaking stairs, past her own room, which smelled of camphor, then up another flight of near-vertical stairs to the attic bedroom.  
When it became clear Nathan would be coming to live with them, she had hastily turned this storage area, which George referred to as his office, into a bedroom. She managed to cut two short curtains from an old splashy-patterned skirt and had hung them at the peeling casement window in an attempt to brighten the room. The narrow iron-framed bed came from the junk shop as had the yellow Navaho blanket that served as a bedspread. The bookshelves had been in the attic all along -- they just needed a coat of bright blue paint. George wasn't prepared to help, so it was the best she could do at such short notice. A neighbour had looked after the boy on the night his parents had been found dead. He was then passed along to the child welfare agency, which placed him with foster-care until they established that the boy had family.  
She turned the bed back and Nathan reluctantly eased himself in.  
'Kiss Aunt Sophie goodnight.' Nathan clung to her neck until she finally had to pry him loose. She noticed that his hair was sticky with perspiration.  
'Hoo, but it's hot and muggy in here,' Sophie said. She unlatched the windows and pushed them out. It was a still, star-encrusted night and not a breath of wind.  
'No, NO!' Nathan started to scream. 'Don't open the window, please, Auntie, please.' His shrill plea shocked her into slamming the windows closed.  
'What on earth-- ' Sophie stood with her back to the window as if barring the way and stared at the child, head covered, squirming under the blankets. She put her hand on him and soothed him.  
'It's all right. Look, I've closed it tight.' Perhaps he was scared of the owls that roosted in the tree outside. Whatever was going on in the poor child's head, this was not the time to reason with him. 'I'll leave the light on a while.'   
When she returned to the living room, George threw down his paper testily.  
'So what was all that about?' he growled.  
'He's upset, that's all. His mommy and daddy just killed in a car accident, you'd hardly expect him to be happy, now would you?'   
'What's the point pretendin' it was an accident, y' damn fool? Anyway, his mother was a cheap drunk and his father was a no-good bum who went from one trouble to another like he was hopping' over puddles.'  
'Please, George--'  
'Yeah, I know, he was your brother and he's dead now, so what's the point talkin' on about it. Right?'  
'Like Paster Whittle said at the service, there's good in all of us, George.'  
'Well, he weren't talkin' from experience of your brother, 'cause he never once laid eyes on him. Church would have fallen down.'  
'I know Mikey had his faults, but it's not our right to judge anybody. Pastor Whittle said that too.' Sophie picked up her knitting and started to count stitches aloud to signify that the subject was closed.  
'an' why did he say stuff like that? Because the town's a-buzz about what happened, that's why.'  
'Idle minds. They've no business speculating about it. Isn't it big enough news that a car goes over a cliff and two people get smashed up on the rocks below? Coroner said it was misadventure.'  
George Turnbull had his opening. 'Sure was. Susan met her misadventure with a smack on the back of the head that police say don't sit right with the way the vehicle rolled.' George paused to leer at Sophie, who had looked up from her knitting to meet his eye boldly. 'Poor ol' Mike there, he was outside, standin' beside the driver's seat, pushin' the car over and got himself hung up in the busted seatbelt. That brother of yours couldn't even do that right! He went down with the ship. I'd call that misadventure in the first degree.'  
Sophie was spared an answer. Nathan's renewed screams came drifting down the stairs.  
'Lord, ain't it enough I had to give up my office,' George snarled. 'Now I gotta put up with that?'  
'Have a bit of Christian compassion,' Sophie answered curtly. 'I'll go up and see what's wrong.' His office indeed! An old chair by the window where he could read magazines that weren't fit for a woman to see.  
Sophie bustled into the room to find the boy buried under the blankets again, sobbing and wailing uncontrollably.  
'Nathan! Nathan! It's me, Auntie Sophie. It's all right. Nothing's going to hurt you.' Nathan quietened and gradually emerged from the pile of blankets. Sophie looked around the room. When she looked at the window, she felt a tingling of goosebumps up and down her arms. One side of the casement was wide open.  
'Did you open the window, Honey?' she asked. Nathan responded by screaming again and burrowing under the bedclothes. She put her hand on his body and patted him until again he settled and emerged. She went to the window, peered out onto the peaceful, moonlit woodland and looked down to the yellow circle cast by the porch light below. The casement was well oiled and moved freely. Perhaps she'd made a mistake. No, she was certain she had latched it. She closed the window, secured it and pushed and pulled on it to test it.  
'No problems. All tight this time,' she said as brightly as she could. 'I wonder how it got open?'  
The boy was wide-eyed. 'Daddy opened it.'   
Sophie hugged him hard. 'You poor child, you've had a nightmare.'  
'Daddy had no face. He kept saying 'Sorry' and then he said Mummy misses me. I've got to go with him to Mummy. He frightened me.'  
Sophie shivered. She found she could barely breathe. She tried not to show it, tried not look at the window.   
'How about I sit with you and sing a bit till you go to sleep.' Nathan nodded solemnly and pressed his face against her hand as it rested on his pillow. Sophie started to hum some old tunes she thought might sound like lullabies. Without thinking, she was singing the old spiritual, 'Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.' Poor Susan, she thought. Within ten minutes, the child's breathing told her he was asleep. She withdrew her hand gently from his face, glanced around the room once more and tiptoed out.  
Was there any point in telling George? Sophie stood in the doorway of the living room and watched her husband dig wax out of his ear with a match. He looked up and paused.  
'You look like you've seen a ghost, woman. What's the matter with you?' His words were enough to start her crying.  
She blurted out the story. 'How could he possibly know about his father's face? Did Mikey come to the room to see his son?'  
'Kid just said his father had no face. Face was a blank, that's all. Don't mean he knows his father got his face squashed bouncin' down the hillside.'  
Sophie was shaking her head in disbelief. 'I don't know, I don't know. The window – how did it get open again?'  
'One thing I know, t'weren't a ghost. You can forget that nonsense. It ain't Christian talk.' George pointed a blunt finger at her chest and smirked. 'Pastor Whittle will soon set you straight on that.'  
Sophie sat down on the sofa opposite her husband. She closed her eyes and murmured a quiet prayer. When she opened her eyes, George was staring at her scornfully.  
'Mikey loved his boy. He wouldn't harm him,' she said. ' He loved Susan, too. Why would he murder her?' She turned her chin to him defiantly.  
George leant forward and spoke slowly as though explaining something to a child. 'Because she was three months gone. Coroner told us that. Now, you know as well as I do, Mike went to the doctor and got himself cut soon as that boy up there were born.'  
Sophie nodded. 'He did, I know. Sometimes it doesn't work.'  
'Lord, woman. You'll believe anything but the truth. Some other fella saddled her up, did the job for him.'   
'Even if that's true , does it necessarily mean he murdered her?'  
'Sure it does! If I found out you slept with some fella, I'd kill you.'  
Sophie bowed her head in mock respect. 'Thank you for that, George.' She was silent for a moment then smiled ruefully and said: 'At fifty, I can be grateful that's all safely behind me.' George jerked his head vigorously in agreement. Sophie knew it would take him a day or two to realise her comment wasn't as innocent as it seemed. He'd lie awake at night and wonder; it would gnaw at him. Then he'd start the questioning, throwing men's names at her one after the other, and she would sit and smile and say nothing till he was ready to hit her.  
The wail from upstairs sounded like a fire siren. Nathan was screaming again and this time, thumping the walls. Sophie jumped to her feet but George pushed her down.  
'No! I'm sick of this. I'll go. I'll sort the little beggar out once and for all.' She watched him take the stairs two at a time. She could hear him thudding across the boards above her head. Praise God, he wouldn't hit the child. Sophie bit her lip and turned to the window.  
A huge bird, it seemed, flapped past at that moment. No, it was the boy, his arms and legs flailing, his face contorted in a shrill scream! Sophie heard the soggy thud as he hit the gravel, then no further sound. She tore at the lock on the front door, burst into the stillness in a flurry of skirts, and knelt beside the boy's body. The hideous angle of his neck told her he was beyond help.  
She could hear George thundering back down the stairs. He ran out onto the porch and stopped, clinging to the post, as he watched her get to her feet.   
'He was standing in the open window when I got to the room. I yelled but he jumped. It was more like something pushed him.'   
'Really, George?'  
'What do you mean: "Really, George?" You know something weird was happenin' up there. His father musta come for him. Mike pushed him out the window.'  
'A ghost? Five minutes ago I was a fool for thinking it. All I know, George, is you were an angry man when you belted up those stairs. I was fearful you'd do the boy an injury.'  
George's face had purpled. He wiped away a fleck of spittle from the corner of his mouth. 'Surely you're not saying I pushed him out the window?'   
'I won't judge anybody, including you, George. That's between you and God -- and the coroner.'


End file.
